We need to go back many years to the very beginning of this story. Stay with me it won’t take long. Shawn and I met in the same town that I grew up in. I was a combo deal because I brought along my four-year-old son. That never made a difference, from day one, he treated us like we just belonged. We got married, bought a little house and proceeded to go about life.
Shawn‘s been a type one diabetic since the age of 12, and in 1998, five years after we got married, he began going into kidney failure, secondary to uncontrolled diabetes. Even though I was a nurse, we were too young to really grasp the magnitude of the changes in our life. He started dialysis and 18 months later he received his first kidney transplant.
While we waited for the call to get his kidney, we continue to live life. He tolerated dialysis fairly well. It was just a small little speed bump. On December 12, 1999, we would receive the call that there was a kidney available. we packed our stuff and headed to the hospital. Shawn went into surgery around 1 PM that afternoon. It was a long day, but I had company and around 7 PM. The surgeon came out and told us that everything had gone well, and the kidney was already functioning. After four days in the hospital, he was discharged home. A few things changed in our life at that point we had more medications, had to be more cautious about being around people who were sick, but his recovery was quick.
The years passed, our family grew by one more son. We weathered several hurricanes. In 2022 hurricane Ian made landfall in our little town, we spent over 12 hours in the eye of the storm with strong hurricane force winds. Two months later, Shawn ended up in the hospital with difficulty breathing, that’s when we discovered that the entire back wall of our home had been moved by the winds, and it was filled with black mold. The pulmonologist told us we could not go back to the house with him. With housing at a premium due to so many destroyed homes, we ended up in a trailer living in the side lot of my mom‘s home.
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